A good liver an essential China

Our outgoing ambassador to Beijing, Geoff Raby, downplayed the need for Mandarin language skills in the job at an AsiaLink-Australia China Business Council lunch in Melbourne yesterday. Raby worked alongside his boss, Foreign Minister
Ke
v
in Rudd
, in the embassy in 1986 but Rudd wasn’t too impressed by his co-worker’s language skills. According to Raby, who is said to have taken from ex-premier Zhou Enlai the record for drinking the most mao tai in a single sitting at the factory where the rancid Chinese liquor was produced, only two things are needed to succeed in Chinese business: physical stamina and “a bloody good liver". BHP Billiton boss
Marius Kloppers
wasn’t present alongside his cohort of recent Wikileaks fame, US Consul General Michael Thurston, but BHP’s public affairs boss, former Labor Party identity Geoff Walsh, was. Rio Tinto’s managing director for Australia,
David Peever
, slipped out quietly after the formalities to check on talks to secure control of Riversdale Mining from Brazil’s CSN.